Words and Point of View

Point of view

A friend of mine recently commented on the media's continued use of the term 'comfort women' in relation to women who were forced into having sex with soldiers during the Second World War. While the assumption of the reporters might be sympathetic to the women involved, the mere use of such language embeds certain assumptions about the default point of view or subjective position from which one views reality. In the more responsible Australian media words which imply other points of view have been challenged  in recent years, with some success - illegals - boat people - refugees - asylum seekers. Prostitutes - sex workers. But others remain - victim (a word raised in a writing workshop I recently attended) places the onus on the person targeted rather than the person who commits a crime against that person, and changes the way a person feels about him or herself, and about the way others view that person.

Words used might have unintended consequences for many of those using them, but not everyone who uses them is unaware of their power. Any speech writer for  any politician, regardless of political persuasion, is very much aware of how words position people, and the relative advantage (or disadvantage) to which those words place them. The oldest trick in the book is to shore up one's own position by contrasting it against that of 'the other' regardless of who that is. We have all been put in the position of 'the other' at some time, and it is not nice to be the foil against which the desirable is made manifest. For some, though, the position becomes so entrenched that those advantaged by it do everything they can to maintain their relative advantage at the expense of 'the other' who is then... where? How demoralising to be raped and labelled a 'comfort woman', to be attacked and called 'a victim', to be labelled in any way that takes responsibility away from the person acting unethically and places it on the person who has behaved to the best of their ability.

As writers we need to be conscious of this in the words we use.

Episode Twelve

Bob and Terry

Bob and Terry were exhausted with the heat and the job they had just completed. They packed up some of the smaller things to take back with them and completed an inventory of the rest. It was likely that another family would be placed in the house once a decision had been made in relation to the boy’s relocation. He might be established with the new family in the old house, with a surrogate in another area, or remain feral to see if something new could be turned up that way. Any final decision would be a matter for later consideration around the compound table.

The two men partook of some food and drink, and a longer rest than was warranted. They could have been heading back sooner, but were reluctant to leave the place and face up to the discomforts of the route ahead. They sat in silence and gazed through the window at the small mound of earth that covered the woman and the cat in the pillowcase. They would later reflect on the old adage that timing is everything, but the circumstances that led to that reflection would not come for some time yet. In its absence they delayed their departure until the light had decided the matter for them.

When they saw that there were no more than two hours of light remaining in the day, they mounted their motor-assisted bicycles and headed off on the familiar route that for two years had taken them backwards and forwards between the road and the house of the woman Jenna, and the boy Dalyon.  This was the track that led to somewhere; not the one that Ma took, the one that ended in a clearing before burrowing deeper and deeper into a tangle of heavy bush. The track Bob and Terry were taking was narrow and uneven, but it had been kept reasonably clear by their weekly visits. It would take about an hour and a half of assisted riding with a tailwind before they reached the road where their vehicle waited. 

            They were just half an hour from the road when they saw tracks indicating that a small family of Listers had recently passed this way. These creatures, the result of a failed experiment with dynamic genomics in the days of the call for innovations for the war effort, had been all but eradicated. Listers always suffered from breeding difficulties, and the likelihood was that the remaining population posed no real threat, but Bob, with the cat’s struggles still exciting his imagination, convinced Terry to make the detour. They followed, only to find that the trail faded away to nothing. Bob and Terry looked around for a while, but could find no new tracks and were just about to turn back when Terry spotted the juveniles, a male and a female. They were playing just a short distance away by a small grove of trees. Bob signaled to Terry to stay put, and crept back to where they had left the bikes. He lifted the flaps of the saddle bags, taking care not to make any sudden movement or sound, and extracted two short-nosed rifles from the saddle-packs.

These were super-light mid twenty-first Century models, originally discovered in a cache hidden  in a bunker deep underground. The two men had argued the case for self-defence on these trips, and were granted special permission by the committee to keep them. The weapons had been stored well, and were still in excellent working condition when they were brought into the compound. Bob, with too many hours of spare time on his hands these days, made sure they were kept that way.

He handed one to Terry, gesturing to him to go for the female juvenile. Terry took a clean shot, dropping it where it had been playing, and Bob got the young male, as it is moved to attack. They had sauntered up to check that they had finished the animals when the mother leapt at them from behind a tree. Terry fired again, grazing its side, and it bolted back into the bush. By then the light was starting to fade and they needed to get on, or risk having to spend the night. They decided to keep going rather than to follow. The animal would die soon enough, a slow-suffering death, but it couldn’t be helped.

A meaningful life

Continuing the theme of kindness, I came across this site today. Great article, worth reading.

Beautiful story by Patricia Johnson

AT THE HOUSE OF THE VIRGIN

Ephesus, Turkey

We are on our way to the House of the Virgin Mary. I feel sceptical about any shrine, icon or acts of intercession as the religious part of my youth was spent in a Congregational church; the austere side of Protestantism where one’s relationship to God is direct, personal, without the Catholic practices of confession or praying to saints, apostles or any intermediary. On arrival, we find we have only half an hour. I photograph the house; it is square, stone, flat topped and obviously much restored. I also take photos of the many candles burning outside in the open fronted glass cases.

It is small  inside with a statue of the Virgin at the front. I pick up my allotted couple of candles, drop a donation in the box and sit on one of three chairs at the back. Suddenly I start to weep. Unexpectedly I am crying and crying, praying for my daughter who died eleven years ago. In the chair to my left is a veiled woman reading a religious text. Beside me, I press my hand to the stone wall. People enter, stand for a while, and leave. I cannot leave because I cannot stop crying. The tears spill down my cheeks. I feel ashamed. ‘Please look after her,’ I pray repeatedly. I hear peaceful music and the stones against my hand are cool and rough.

I leave and take my thin white candles out to the sandboxes. Someone has emptied each box except for two candles at each end. I light one candle and stand it in the box for Jessie. To whom should I dedicate the other candle? It is no good: I have to give both for her. I am crying once more.

As place and I light the second candle a voice beside me asks ‘Are you alright?’ I turn to see an attractive young woman.

‘Do you need a hug?’ she continues. I am unable to answer yet we embrace. This is a very long hug; her head, covered its fine white cotton scarf is on my shoulder as she says over and over, ‘It’s alright, it’s alright.’

I want to thank her in Turkish, tesekkur ederim, but stop myself, as there are so many nationalities here that she may easily not be Turkish. Instead, I ask, ‘Are you a Christian?’

‘I am a Muslim, but the Virgin Mary is important to us too.’

I nod, trying to control my tears, groping for words. ‘Where are you from?’

‘My husband and I,’ she gestures towards a young man, ‘are from Pakistan, but now we live in Toronto.’

She is slim and petite with large dark eyes and a wide smile. Her name is Saniyah. I tell her my name and that I am from Australia but originally from Connecticut. I tell her this because Connecticut is close to Toronto, though they are in different countries. She continues to smile at me as I say, ‘I didn’t expect this to happen.’

‘I was the same yesterday at Topkapi Palace,’ she replies. ‘I was so was so close to the Prophet’s Cloak I could almost touch it. I was over (her English stumbles as she pauses), overcome with tears because I knew that this would never happen again.’

I thank her as much as I can and we part. I wash my face and go sit in the tour bus, exhausted. I wonder if anything will change; if I will change, if shame can disappear. I only know that love and kindness are real.

 

Sydney Writers Festival Guest with Advice on How to Write a Novel

The picture today features pages from my novel

Radio National's Books and Arts Daily has been interviewing some interesting writers lately from the Sydney Writers Festival.
With regard to the craft of writing a novel, Michael Cathcart recently interviewed  Scarlett Thomas about her book Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock The Secret Power of Stories. The interview can be streamed or downloaded from the RN site on the link provided. I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but the reviews are good and it might be one to look out for, especially for students of the craft.

Episode Eleven

Thaan

Thaan opened her eyes, lifted her head from the ground, and sniffed the air. There was nothing. The wind had stopped dead, the temperature was rising, and everything was away, or in hiding. She dropped her head down onto the pillow of leaves that she had swept together, and closed her eyes again. The sun would be low in the sky before she came to her hands and knees, stood, and stretched her body in preparation for the hunt.  

This quest for survival was becoming more difficult. She was feeling older than her seasons, and the wound in her side had started to fester. Before she set off, she would remove the bark that she had tied to her body, dig a hole, and bury it deep, covering the place with earth, leaves, twigs and feathers. She would drag her body to the river where she would wash the wound until it was raw. She would strip the soft bark from the weeping river tree and tie it in place. She would heal herself. She would make herself strong again for the sake of her children, and do what she must do. Finally, when the job was done, she would prepare a hollow in the ground, fill it with soft, fragrant branches, lie down on top of them, and cover herself with them.  There would come a time for the long forgetfulness.

For three nights she had lifted her head at dusk only to let it fall again, down into that other world where loss could be recovered. Here she was with her children, alive, sleek and strong, playing on the river bank. Here they crept through the long grasses where a small herd grazed, ready for picking. She showed them how they must take the old and save the young to keep the herd strong. Here, they had eaten their fill. She slept with one eye open while they played at her back, tumbling over one another and laughing. When they were strong enough to travel, they would leave this place and track along the river towards the sunrise until they reached the ocean.  Perhaps they would find the others.

It was a hot day. They flattened their bodies at the river and drank thirstily. Tdu fell in. She grasped his leg and pulled him out. He shook the water from his fur. She took a stick and combed it through. Va tumbled and rolled around on the grass for her attention. She sat back on her haunches. The sound of the river water trickled by and the scent of mud hung in the air.  There was something else – the smell of man. She signaled to her children to stay back as she ventured forward, moving soundlessly into a close stand of trees from which she would find a vantage point. She had miscalculated. Something was dreadfully wrong. Slowly, as if pulling herself through thick mud, she turned to see what she must see.

Here were her children playing in silence, and there, the two men watching. Something that was long like a stick and hard like black stone was held at their shoulders. Lightening cracked and the world exploded. Her children jerked back as if they had been struck. They slumped to the ground. The men walked slowly towards them and placed the sticks on their bodies. Another lightening crack. And another.

Here were her still and silent children. One of the predators moved them with the stick that had just exploded into their bellies and backs. This one leant back and bared its teeth. It was making a noise that jerked from its body between gulps of air. It bent over, holding onto its sides, making that noise. The larger one stood still and stretched out to its full length. She leapt out, but this one was too fast, and the stick exploded again. There was a searing fire in her side. Her body took over and bounded away.

The men left. She circled back and fell across her children. It was too late. Their blood had fed the earth. She howled for them through the night. They grew cold and hard in her arms. At last she rose and gently laid them on the earth. She dug a hole and lined it with the softest of the branches from the fragrant tree, placed her children there, and covered them.  She lay down beside them, feeling nothing but exhaustion, and asked the earth to take her.

Now the hunger had begun to gnaw at her belly and overtake her longing for sleep. This time it gave her the push that she needed. She knew that if she didn’t rise this time, she would not rise at all. Her need for revenge battled with her desire for sleep. She would find the children of men and cause their herd to grow weak, before she allowed herself to rest. Her compass was set to the sound of young human voices that she had heard blending together in a mockery of birdsong. She had work to do.

 

*

The three days of sleep and hunger had sharpened her senses and Thaan felt ready to travel again. She was moving slowly, emerging from the sleep world, where touch and smell and taste were dead. In this other-world, floating images of the already done and the yet to come, stirred her fear. Now she moved softly on all fours, stopped and felt the heavy earth descending, the life that moved in its body, the long fingers of trees, the slow expansion of fungus, the scuttle of small prey and of those insects and spiders too small for her to bother. She felt the shapes of the leaves and seeds that had dropped and burrowed down beneath her feet, the way the ground made subtle changes beneath her. She felt the changes that told of who had passed this way, and showed what they were doing.

The trace of the two men was cold now. It led her to a place where the endless hard strip that smelt of pungent resin and fire, ran between the trees. Beside it, in the soft dirt, were furrows left from the thing that had carried them away. The filthy stench of smoke lingered where it had forced its way into the edges of the vegetation.  The tracks of men and their atrocities passed through whatever could be torn.

These children that she now followed were changelings. They would grow to become this kind of atrocity. It was in their nature. For now they were creatures of the forest. They stopped, they sensed, they played. In their tumbles she felt the vibrations of her own children in life. It sharpened her anguish and pushed her onwards.  

*

The torn silver threads of a web showed her the way when she lost the scent. These children were learning to take on the smells of the birds and the forest, to walk through water, to disappear into the trees. In other ways they left their traces so carelessly – the broken threads and branches, the disrupted patterns that she read so effortlessly. She tracked on, lifting her head to sniff the wind and to listen.

There it was again. She stopped, confounded by the response in her body which simultaneously drew and repelled her. The children had joined their voices together and lifted the air. There was something heart-wrenchingly familiar and sacred in that sound. It rooted her there. She found herself unable to move forward, unable to move. When the song ended she found that the hair on her back was standing on end, and that the will had drained from her gut.  A crow broke the spell with its gaw-aw-graw-aw.

She shook her head, opened her eyes, and saw again the empty place where her lifeless children should have been. In its place was the flash of that first image. She registered again the predator’s disdain as it pushed at Va with its foot. She heard again the ugly sound it made, a fractured howl, as it held its sides and shook to produce that cruel sound. These children who brought her to her knees with their sweet voices, were of its kind.  She drew her lips back and pressed on in the direction of the sound.

Good post on Brain Pickings site

If you are interested in what drives some writers to keep writing, it is worth taking a look at the post on the Brain Pickings site regarding George Orwell titled Why I write

The post will lead you to insights by other great writers on the same general topic.